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Operation FastLink Yields Three Arrests

Posted by timothy on from the book-'em-danno dept.

Doomrat writes "As promised (see previous story), Operation FastLink has led to the arrests of 3 key members of the Fairlight group. NHTCU officers and local police executed search warrants and arrested three men at separate locations in Sheffield, Manchester and Belfast. Over 200 computers have been seized, along with 100 CD copiers. Raids were carried out in the UK, the U.S., Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden."

9 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not a good effort. by bersl2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The majority just use the goods and have nothing to do with the original illegal activities.

  2. Re:strange by kryptkpr · · Score: 5, Informative

    A friend that's close to the scene tells me that for the past while FLT had been selling leech accounts on their private dumps. He quoted $800 usd for leech on a 7tb server with a 1gbit connection.

    I guess they sold to the wrong person, and they got busted..

    --
    DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
  3. Re:I wish... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Informative
    I wish... they put all that effort into hunting criminals that actually hurt people (as opposed to wallets).
    Rest assured that they are: the police of various countries often work together to track down terrorists and murderers. You should also realise that a lawful society depends on all laws being enforced. Things would turn into a right mess if the police would stop going after petty crime, traffic violations and fraud cases, until they had solved all murder cases.
    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  4. Re:Copying games is worse than rape by PD · · Score: 3, Informative
    Goddamn, the article you get from that search says 65 MONTHS for rape.

    The link

    The quote:


    The average sentence for criminals convicted of rape in the United States (and released in 1992) is 117 months. The average time served is 65 months, which equates to 56 percent of the actual sentence served. For crimes of sexual assault, the average sentence is 72 months, and the average time served is 35 months, equating to 49 percent of time served. (Greenfeld, Lawrence A., 1995, "Prison Sentences and Time Served for Violence," page 1, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.)


    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  5. Re:Copying games is worse than rape by ray-auch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Given average life expectancy is about 80 years, this would mean average age of conviction around 15yrs. Clearly bullshit.

    Checking the document clearly shows it is 65 months.

    And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...

  6. Re:Copying games is worse than rape by bryanp · · Score: 2, Informative

    And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...

    65 months is the average actually SERVED, 117 months being the average time sentenced. 65 months = 5 years, 5 months, not 3 years.

    Three months or five, either is too short. Rapists need to serve a very short sentence - about as long as it takes to stand them up in front of a firing squad.

    --
    "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
  7. Re:Not a good effort. by Slack3r78 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It depends. At the school I go to, there was a kid busted for running a warez server which had apparently been up for some time. From what I understand, the reason he was caught was because the school upgraded their connection - while in the past it was common for the bandwidth to be maxed out at all hours of the day, suddenly the extra bandwidth allowed them to notice suspicious spikes in activity that shouldn't have been there.

    True, there are other things that an admin can watch for, but many schools simply don't have the budget to pay someone to constantly monitor all traffic in and out.

  8. Re:Not a good effort. by Zan+Zu+from+Eridu · · Score: 5, Informative
    They didn't just catch three people in this operation, but they took down several servers, some of which the operators might not have realized were even being used for warez distribution.

    That's bullshit. I know some people who've been raided here in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that almost all of those confiscated servers were in student dorms and connected to university networks; most of them on 100mbit lines, some on 10mbit lines.

    It's the fat lines those groups are after, you would need thousands of cable/dsl lines to "race" an ISO (these groups are in competition to get the cracked versions out as fast as possible). And they're not hacking those boxes, they're paying for them with status as a "courier" or with real money. I know students who've been offered 100 euro a month or more to put a 10TB server in their room.

  9. Fairlight Farewell by RotJ · · Score: 3, Informative
    from flt-ff.nfo
    It has been a good few years, but it is now time for Fairlight to close its doors for good. Many reasons have made us come to this judgement but we feel it is for the best. The scene is getting to be a dangerous place. Not only do we have to fear from the feds but also the unhonorable ones in the scene who lower themselves to narq the competition. Retiring on top seems to be the best decision for us. We want to thank all those throughout the years who have helped us in one way or another.

    /Team FairLight

    I guess they didn't follow their own advice. It seems Fairlight reactivated 2 months after that message, possibly under new management or because whatever FBI sweep was going on at the time was over.